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Part of "Luilekkerland" (The Land of Cockaigne), 1567 - Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The Phil celebrates spring early

Hastings Philharmonic Choir mounts a spring celebration to rival Jack-in-the-Green on 11 April at St Mary in the Castle. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana rivalled Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in its mixture of the sacred and the profane, the breaking loose from the shackles of strict medieval mores and the youthful vigour of a spring rejuvenation. Chris Cormack examines the kind of people who wrote the poetry that inspired Carl Orff towards his life’s musical masterpiece, the ‘scenic cantata’ that is Carmina Burana.

Veni, Veni, Venias - Come, come and keep coming!

This music is a collection of songs (carmina) about wine, women and love – based on poems in Latin, Old German and Old French in a manuscript from around 1230 found in the Benedictine monastery of Beuren (Burana – from Beuren) in Bavaria.

The authorship is ascribed to a group of people known as Goliards; to their detractors, a rabble of idle, rich, sometimes defrocked, priests, known for gambling, womanising and intemperance in the taverns; to their proponents, a group of students with the leisure and means to break free from the strait-jacket of religious education and produce secular literature which was highly influential on such seminal vernacular works as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the love songs of Minne singers, Boccaccio’s Decameron and other progenitors of the European literary tradition.

Illustrated love poem from Carmina Burana with text in both German and Latin (Bavarian State Library).

The Goliards wrote their songs and  literature mainly in Latin because this was the lingua franca of the time for educated youth and they were a collection of students of all nationalities wandering around Europe to the varied places of learning to find new mentors. These places were church institutions often linked to the monasteries. During the Dark Ages the monasteries were the main repositories of classical learning; it is easy to imagine how young students, there to study theology, could find it much more interesting to study the secular Roman and Greek texts preserved there. Thus in the Carmina Burana we see the influence of pagan rites of spring and invocations of the Roman goddess of fate, O Fortuna, and the wheel of fortune.

This body of students, although the privileged few from the wealthy and powerful families, could easily bemoan the turn of the wheel of fortune that left them bereft of substantial inheritance; all the power and wealth went to the first-born son and they were left with no obvious role in life. The daughters and later born sons were packed off to the monasteries or elsewhere, but not without having a good education which of course lead to greater expectations and aspirations in life. These aspirations were not necessarily satisfied with the vocation of a priest, monk or nun.

Theology lecture at the early Sorbonne (13th century).

At this time in the 12th and 13th centuries, the early university institutions were just establishing themselves; one of the earliest, Paris, was a meeting place of a number of the the Carmina poets. Interestingly, Peter of Blois (1135-1204), a French poet and diplomat, as a student of law and theology penned his Latin Goliard poems at the Sorbonne, 10 of which were incorporated into Carmina Burana. Peter later took up a post in England as Latin secretary to Henry II and Thomas à Becket.

It makes one wonder whether, as a young Goliard, Peter ever met the young Prince Henry and Thomas while carousing in the taverns. Peter went on to become Latin secretary to Eleanor of Aquitaine. In one of the Carmina songs, reference is made to a dream of making love with (“lying in the arms of”) the Queen of England; some sources speculate that this could be a reference to Eleanor of Aquitaine who married Henry II of England.

The Goliards’ utopia was a land called Cockaigne, a land of plenty away from the harshness of medieval peasant life, where societal conventions are defied, sexual liberty is rife,  a reaction and resentment against the strictures of religious asceticism and dearth. At a key point in the dramatic climax of the Carmina Burana, the main baritone soloist introduces himself as the “Abbot of Cockaigne” and further mayhem is let loose “in the tavern” and the “court of love” where rampant youth enjoy “happy coupling” (felix conjunctio).

Mayhem was a feature of the universities in the 12th century. The riotous carousing of the students in Paris and Oxford lead to confrontations between ‘town and gown’  and the vagabond students were forced to decamp to Cambridge – a new university was  founded. Carl Orff’s virile music and themes resonate in the 20th and 21st centuries  where students used their freedom to rebel against orthodoxy – make love not war! And the ‘hard-working’ population begrudge the students their cocking a snook at sobriety and conformity.

The choir’s young musical director, Márcio da Silva, can be relied upon to coax out a virile and exciting delivery from the performers and a full house is assured.

Hastings Philharmonic Choir presents Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and the seldom heard Suite for Two Pianos, Opus 17, by Rachmaninoff. Two great local pianists, Bernard King and Francis Rayner join to support this concert at 7pm, 11 April 2015, at St Mary in the Castle, Pelham Crescent, TN34 3AF.

 

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Posted 11:14 Saturday, Apr 4, 2015 In: Music & Sound

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